


Melancholy

by EldritchLyric



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Death, Depression, Distant Friends, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Loneliness, No Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26870011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EldritchLyric/pseuds/EldritchLyric
Summary: Harry tries to grapple with the what is left after the Second Wizarding War.With his friends having moved on with their lives, Harry continues to dwell in the same place he's been stuck in ever since that fateful killing curse hit him in the Forbidden Forest.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Melancholy

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys... I kinda mostly wrote this to cope with some feelings I was having at the time of writing this. Sorry if it's a little bit worrying or not what you like Harry to be after the Epilogue but yeah.
> 
> Thanks for reading, but this is mostly for me. <3

Even after Sirus’ death I managed to cope at some level. Sure, I raged and screamed and tore apart Dumbledore’s office, but I was filled with emotion. Anger and absolute grief at watching one of the few people connected to my parents fall through the veil. I cried and raged for weeks and it propelled me through the summer. Violent and hateful and full of righteous rage and I made it through summer and then eventually through sixth year. Then Dumbledore died, the horcrux hunt started and there wasn’t time for grief; there wasn’t time for sadness and pain. You had to keep moving or you died and if you died then everyone you ever loved and cared for was dead too.

After I died, things took a bit of a different note. For a time, the last communication I had through the resurrection stone kept me going. Gave me strength to walk to my death, to come back, to defeat Voldemort once and for all. But now he’s dead. The war is finished. Yeah, I’m sure the Aurors will be hunting down the Death Eaters that fled for the next couple years and a part of me even wants to join them and rid the Wizarding World of every last bit of Voldemort and all he stood for. But the war is over, and I feel empty.

Remus. Tonks. Fred. Colin. Dobby. Hedwig. Moody. Dumbledore. Sirius. And so many others who died for me or because of me. 

I never joined up with the Aurors. I never went and pursued my dreams of becoming a Quidditch player either. I stay shut in at 12 Grimmauld Place and let the days pass me by as friends try to check in with me, try to make sure that I’m doing okay. Somehow, they’ve managed to keep moving forward. Molly still floos every now and then. She seems more put together than I am these days. Hermione is busy trying to work her way up in the Ministry and Ron is off hunting Death Eaters abroad and while they’d love to help me and they do check in from time to time, I still feel so alone. I feel like they’ve moved on without me.

Kreacher and I don’t really speak but we have a general understanding of each other. We both lost a lot and he still wear the fake Slytherin locket around his neck, whispering about Regulus, Walburga, and sometimes even Sirius. And when everything becomes too much I leave and head back to Hogwarts. What was always my escape while living during the Dursley’s is a nightmare that I love to relive. During the summers I walk the hallways reminiscing and trying to remember all the days before the war. I walk the grounds alone and McGonagall never complains about how long I stay or how often I show up. I’m reminded of all the people who died on these grounds during the final battle, those I couldn’t save.

Colin haunts me the most. You’d think it would be Sirius or Remus or Hedwig or even Fred. But when I close my eyes, I see his face staring blankly up towards me. How it felt like he was so young only for me to realize that I was barely older than he was. We weren’t even adults and now we have to live with the scars and nightmares of a war that we were born into. So, walking Hogwarts is peaceful and violent.

When school is in session I still come to Hogwarts. I normally stick to the grounds but even then, I still hear the whispers from students. Some are just as scarred as I am. Some point and whisper at the “Slayer of He-who-must-not-be-named.” I put on a pained smile when I walk past them on the grounds or when they come up to me and try to thank me for what I’d done. What I was forced to do. 

But on the bad days, I visit the graveyards of all my dead friends and family. I visit my parents graves a lot. Re-read the line on their gravestones: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” I think about that line a lot these days. Depending on my mood it means different things, but it sticks to my brain in a way nothing else will. And when I visit the graves of Colin, of Remus & Sirius, of Dumbledore, of Fred, I think about that line. On these worst days I go back to Privet Drive and watch as a new family moves into that house and lives a mundane life in a mundane neighborhood, and I feel a strange sense of melancholy. 

I visit the Burrow from time to time and try to put on brave face while Molly dotes on me and Arthur chats absentmindedly about nothing while they try to not think about their dead child. All the Weasley’s get together like one big family minus one and we try to laugh and have fun. Some are more successful than others. And when the energy dies down, George and I find a random bar somewhere in London and get wasted to not think about those close to us who are gone. Who are never coming back? For a short period of time we understand each other and then we go home and return to the cycle we’re always stuck in.

After the first-year people start to come to terms with the losses of the first war. After the second year they start to move on. After the third year their lives return to normal. After the fourth year they start to wonder why I haven’t moved on. And now it’s been five years. Only George feels the same anymore. I’m 22 now and I still feel just as broken as the day came back from the dead. 

God. I was ready to die. Do you understand what that feels like? How do you reckon with what’s left? It was so, so hard to come back after I finally decided to die. My family was right there on the other side and now I’m stuck here. So, I think about that line on my parent’s gravestones and I think about how I conquered death.  
On the very worst days, I hope for some sort of terrible accident to take me like the one that took Luna’s mother. When the darkest parts of my depression rise to the top and I feel like nothing will ever change and that I really did die back in the Forbidden Forest. That my soul is gone and only the husk of my body still walks like some inferi clinging on to life.

Today is one of those very worst days. Kreacher looked at me with those eyes of pity and I couldn’t stand it. I haven’t eaten in a couple of days, but my childhood prepared me for that. It doesn’t bother me. I haven’t heard from Hermione for a while, but I don’t have the guts to floo her with how busy she is. So, sit alone in the house owned by a dead man. And the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.


End file.
